Yasmin Chowdhury
The recent decision to build a Metro (underground rail) system in
Dhaka has met with a range of responses. On one side is
the "halleluyah" response—at last, government is taking public
transit seriously, with plans to invest serious funds (at least $3.2
billion US dollars) into making life easier for the masses.
On the other side rises the practical question: how feasible is the
plan, how much will eventually get built, will it actually function,
and might not a different form of public transit—say, a tram or
trolley, or Bus Rapid Transit—achieve similar benefits for about a
hundred times less money per kilometer?
On the bright side, traveling in cities with a Metro is a far
different experience from traveling in those without one. Where I
grew up, there is no developed system for public transit, and it is
virtually impossible to get around without a car. Since I let my
driver's license expire about a decade ago, I feel like a child when
I visit, reliant on adults to take me places. Meanwhile, when I
visit big modern cities, like Boston, Washington D.C., Chicago, New
York City, or San Francisco, or any number of European cities, I can
easily move around on my own.
But while the independent mobility is a blessing, with it comes a
significant downside. When traveling underground, we fail to
experience the city we are in. Living in Boston and frequently
traveling by subway, I had many of the stops memorized, and could
easily get around underground—but I had no idea what was over my
head. When I finally got into the habit of walking through the city
following the subway lines but above ground, I realized that only
now was I gaining a perspective of where buildings, monuments, and
important parts of the city are in relation to each other—not in
terms of a subway map, but in terms of actual physical layout. In
the process, I realized how little I had actually understood, all
those years of living there, about the true layout of Boston—or of
what is to be found in various neighborhoods that I had ever only
passed under. The parts of the city I knew best were those I walked
in, or where the subway emerged into a street-level trolley, and
there was a sense of connection between the passengers and the
street life out our windows.
When traveling underground, we are unaware—and thus often
unconcerned—about the situation at ground level. Passing under a
slum, we don't pause to reflect on the lives of the people there,
and whether something couldn't be done to make it better, or on why
trash is thrown here and there, or how desolate some of the streets
look...but we do notice those things when traveling on the surface,
and there is the possibility that from noticing, we will go on to
change it.
This has a direct practical side as well for business owners; when
traveling at ground level, we can see shops and other amenities.
Oh, that's where I can buy that—or oh, that looks like a pleasant
restaurant! And knowing where it is and how to access it, there is
the possibility of going back someday. This is both a far more
amusing way to pass the time when traveling then in looking at
tunnel walls, but also is good for the businesses we pass.
Then of course there are the practical matters. I remember seeing a
map of the subway system in Washington, D.C. which showed
various "planned" routes. I remember seeing the same map year after
year, and being surprised that they were never built. Short on
funds? Similarly, I read in the newspaper in Bangkok that the sky
train was supposed to extend far beyond the existing network. That
hasn't happened, and the sky train itself took many years to build
in part, I hear, due to corruption. Meanwhile, the new Metro in
Bangkok doesn't go much beyond the sky train. What then are the
chances that Dhaka will succeed in building all it plans? If the
existing plans prove unaffordable, as the price of materials
continues to rise, how much will a very limited system do to reduce
traffic congestion or make traveling easier?
Meanwhile, building a subway system requires building a lot of
tunnels. The funny thing about tunnels is, they have to be accessed
from the street. This involves a lot of big holes, and while those
holes are in place, streets are closed down. So congestion will be
significantly worse for the years during which the Metro system is
built.
There is also the issue of crowding on the subway. I was in New
York City recently, and given the intense street-level congestion,
when going too far to walk, I tried the subway. It was certainly
better than being stuck in traffic, but of course I had no idea
where I was, and I couldn't decipher the thick New Yorker accent of
the conductor. On one trip, the train was so packed that I couldn't
see out the windows to read the names of the stops. This made
arriving at my destination a bit of a challenge, and left me as
clueless as ever about the geography of Manhattan.
The sky train is often packed in Bangkok, with barely room to
stand. Thais are polite, and I have never had a man grab me.
Unfortunately, I can't say that for my experience of riding in
crowded subways in Boston, and I have heard horror stories about the
system in Mexico, which apparently had to provide separate carriages
for women to prevent sexual harassment on the packed trains.
Then there are those lovely escalators down to the stations. Where
there are hills, or where the system must go under high rise
buildings, stations must be built far below ground. Some of those
escalators seem to go on forever. Stepping onto those moving stairs
with the ground so far below as to seem to belong almost to another
planet always makes my head spin. I was relieved, on a recent trip
to D.C., to discover that a Bangladeshi colleague had the same
experience, only worse. He insisted on taking the lift. Of course
the lifts are intended mostly for the disabled, those with small
children, or those with luggage, so one sometimes must wait a long
time for it. Between long lines for lifts and the crowded
situations of the trains, it sometimes feels as if we have simply
shifted a portion of our traffic congestion below ground.
Speaking of traffic congestion, it helps to remember that people
need to be able to get to and from the public transit stops.
Getting from one stop to another in little time is a great
convenience, but the benefits of that convenience are rapidly
diminished when it is difficult to get from public transit to one's
actual destination. I made a mistake in Bangkok once and got off at
the wrong subway stop. As I came up to the street, I realized that
where I needed to go was on the other side of a highway, with no
provision for crossing. I could either go back underground, pay
again, then wait for another train to come along to take me just one
more stop, or I could risk my life running across the highway.
Needless to say, I ran.
In cities with broken sidewalks, and sidewalks blocked by parked
cars, and barbed wire and cement medians to prevent people from
crossing the street, getting to and from public transit becomes a
daunting challenge. Anyone in their right mind would choose to
drive instead, if they had the option, thus defeating in large part
the point of the public transit in the first place: to woo people
away from their cars. That is, public transit doesn't exist in a
vacuum—it is part of the city, and it is meant to connect places not
just along the tracks, but throughout the city. If people can't
easily get to the stops on foot, or on rickshaw, then there is
little point in building the system in the first place.
Then there is that lovely dream of the uncongested streets of Dhaka,
once our Metro system is built. How many large, crowded cities with
crowded Metros have streets free of traffic jams? Let's face it,
moving through a city—even at a good pace—underground just isn't
that pleasant an experience. Subway stations are often hot and
smelly. Homeless people tend to use them as urinals, and there are
always those aggressive people who insist on smoking despite all the
signs. If subways freed up the streets, then all the passengers who
could afford a car or taxi would go back to riding in one.
I remember once being late for the airport in Boston and figuring
that rather than go all that way below ground, and change trains
twice, and move at the snail's pace the Boston subway often goes at—
it is the oldest subway system in the US and thus the least modern—I
would take a taxi. Oops. Of course it took even longer, thanks to
all the traffic, and I missed my plane. Yet Boston's subway system
is far more extensive than Dhaka's is likely ever to be, and it is
easy to walk in Boston, and there is a good bus system to complement
the subway, and the population is a fraction of Dhaka's. So why are
there still traffic jams, when the Metro is supposed to eliminate
them?
I'm sure the decision was made in good faith. Perhaps the planners
involved have not spent much time in the major cities of the world,
and experienced both their subways and the traffic situation above
ground. Perhaps they feel that people enjoy being below ground, or
that the city is best experienced as little as possible—that is,
either underground, or safely insulated in a steel box. No doubt
they consider the expenditure of a mere few billion dollars quite
reasonable, pocket change really. Perhaps they are too busy to read
the Strategic Transport Plan which was meant to map out the best
transport plan for the future, and which found that a Metro would
offer no significant improvements over surface public transit, and
thus there is no justification to build it.
Even allowing that a few billion dollars is a minor sum which should
involve little thought or planning before expending, I would still
suggest that when Dhaka's city planners make their final decision
about an efficient, fast, affordable, high quality system of public
transit, they should be careful not to miss the boat. It's a lot
more expensive and more technically difficult to build and operate
an underground system than a surface one.
We would get a far more extensive system, with far lower fares or
less government subsidy, if we built a surface rather than an
underground system. The system could be built a lot faster than a
Metro, and with a lot less disruption of traffic during its
construction. That issue of fares is important—around the world,
public transit tends to be expensive, and yet still highly
subsidized by government. The more expensive the system is to build
and maintain, the higher the fares and the subsidies, and the less
that will eventually get built.
People could see their city out the windows while riding, gaining
both a sense of perspective and of knowledge of what is happening
around them. A less expensive system could be started quickly, and
gradually expanded. Ensuring that people can walk around the city
would not only make the public transit system viable, but would help
reduce congestion by shifting some short distance trips to walking.
The money to fix our footpaths, and the political will to ban car
parking on them, should not be more difficult to find than the
billions planned for the Metro.
Public transit is definitely the way to go—but not all public
transit was created equal, and leaping onto the wrong train won't
help us reach our final destination.
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